Climate Change in Habitat Loss

of Polar Bears (Canada)

Aditi Bardhan
Post Graduate 2nd semester
Geography Department
Presidency University
5th March, 2019

ABSTRACT
Climate Change is one of the burning issues of Global importance at present. Its impacts are far
reaching and one of them is the habitat loss of the Polar Bears who, though are still not in existential
crisis, are predicted to be so in new future, possibly by the end of 21 st century. Climate change causes
heavy rain during their breeding period which causes collapse of maternity dens. Also they can’t reach
the shore as their transporting platforms i.e; the sea ice packs melt. Moreover, they feed on ring seals
which they hunt from the layers of the sea ice. Overall, shrinking of sea ice cover is a major threat on
the entire species population who now have to struggle for their existence. Canada being the hotspot of
polar bear population, shows the acute trends and condition of this furry vulnerable species.

INTRODUCTION
Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) are the inhabitants of the Arctic Circle who are not only the
largest species of Bears but also the biggest carnivores among the land animals, but are now
threatened to their existence and have been declared as “Vulnerable” internationally by IUCN
in their Red List Category in 2015. Polar Bears’ Primary Habitat is sea ice on which they
depend for hunting seals, resting, seeking mates, breeding and also for maternity dens. Their
feeding period is also dependent on this sea ice which is between freeze up to breakup period
of sea ice in Arctic Circle, during which they hunt and feed and store the fat in their body to
keep on their metabolism during the ice free period. Hence, sooner the freeze up and later
the break up occurrences take place, its more favorable for the Polar Bears to survive and
stay healthy. But the recent trend of Climate Change owing to Global Warming has impacted
even on the far away frozen poles. The polar ice is breaking down and the surrounding
circumpolar regions are having greater period ice free seas than the frozen ones. This is
having an acute impact of the polar flora and fauna of which Polar Bears are also not
exceptions. Loss of sea ice has caused habitat loss for the Polar Bears leading them to be
regarded as the threatened species of 21st century. Subpopulations of Polar Bears are found
in 19 circumpolar regions of Arctic Circle –
 Baffin Bay (BB)
Barents Sea (BS)
Chukchi Sea (CS)
Davis Strait (DS)
East Greenland (EG)
Foxe Basin (FB)
Gulf of Boothia (GB)
Kane Basin (KB)
Kara Sea (KS)
Lancaster Sound (LS)
Laptev Sea (LP)
M’Clintock Channel (MC)
Northern Beaufort Sea (NB)
Norwegian Bay (NW) Distribution of Subpopulations of Polar Bears around Arctic Belt (AB)
Southern Beaufort Sea (SB) SOURCE: Regher et al., (2016)
Southern Hudson Bay (SH) NOTE: Sea ice in summer recedes pole wards and hence away from
the circumpolar coasts in Divergent Ice Ecoregion, whereas in case of
Viscount Melville Sound (VM)
Archipelago & Convergent, sea ice generally stays still in summer.
Western Hudson Bay (WH)
Study Area: There are around 20,000 – 25,000 polar bears world wide of which 64 to 80% are
found in Canada[2]. The ecoregions in Canada are mostly seasonal or archipelago. But
presently, because of global warming and climate change, the multilayered sea ice are
becoming annual layered sea ice and even ice free in some areas during summer. This is a
major cause of concern. Polar Bears are facing habitat loss there; as a result they are
migrating onshore and getting into the living space of human beings, like in towns like
Churchill, which is dangerous for both human beings and the polar bears. In Canada, the
areas where polar bears can be found are Labrador, Hudson Bay, James Bay, Manitoba,
Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Quebec, Yukon, etc. Also polar bears
are one of the major attractions of the local tourism. Polar Bears being threatened, also
impacts the Tourism Industry. This is not the scenario of only Canada, other countries having
polar bear are also facing the brunt of climate change. Hence in November 15, 1973 a treaty
was signed between 5 Nations – Canada, the U.S.A, Denmark (for Greenland), Norway (for
Svalbard) and Russia – those who contribute large shares in polar bear population. This treaty
is known as the Agreement on Conservation of Polar Bears where each of the member states
agreed on certain standard norms to protect the polar bear population. But it is hardly
enough to get rid of the larger impacts of a global phenomenon like Global Warming which
needs assistance from every single individual as anthrogenic influence on global warming has
taken the most significant role than the natural ones.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Arctic sea ice has an all bounded location where the land barriers prevent the sea ice to float
freely and reach the lower latitudes from the poles and melt, hence making sea ice
accumulation very prominent here. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) plays an important role in
influencing sea ice condition of Arctic Basin and its circumpolar areas. During positive AO,
strong wind accumulate over the pole and hence help in extended formation of sea ice. But
recently, the relation between AO and sea ice extent is not that significant as before; as
presently the factor of warming is overriding the impact of AO. Also reports say that the
Arctic is warming up at a faster rate than the global average[4].
Research Problem: Hence, Climate Change, following Global Warming, is being addressed as
the major influencing factor of Sea ice cover. Now, this sea ice, providing the platform of basic
means for existence to the polar bear population, has been their primary habitat and the
irregular freeze up and early breakup of the sea ice is putting a big question mark on the
future existence of an entire species clan owing to Habitat Loss, already identifying them as
vulnerable.
Literature Review: There are numerous literatures that studied the several aspects focusing
on climate change, its impacts on arctic basin and it flora and fauna and also special papers
are there on polar bear behavior and their life pattern. Ian Stirling and Andrew E. Derocher in
their paper[11] have discussed that the impact of this climate change is most adversely
experienced in the southern part of the polar bear extent. Places like Hudson Bay has acute
impression of this negative impact. They suggested that this unidirectional change in sea ice
habitat coverage and its distribution in long run will negatively correlate with the polar bear
population. Also here the ecological importance of sea ice in a polar bear life cycle has been
established which shows that the former directly controls reduced access to seals which often
causes them underweight problem and even starvation during maternity period. Climate
change also brings winter rain resulting into maternity den collapse – all these impacting their
population trend in the long run. The paper also claims that polar bears are true indicators of
climatic warming as they are the top predators of the marine arctic food chain. Stephen G.
Hamilton et al., (2014)[12] in his study has also given special emphasis on physical alteration
of marine ecosystem due to climate change that will bring about biological imbalance in the
same. Hamilton’s study area was in Canadian archipelago, where he deduced a projection
study from 2006-2100. It validates the findings made by several scholars that there has been
a shift from multi-layer sea ice pack to annual layers and the lengthening of ice free period
which by the end of 21st century will be critical for the polar bear archipelago subpopulations.
The study’s projection establishes a prediction of starvation and increased maternity failure
by the concerned species by 2100. Study made by Josefino C. Comiso[13] has done a
quantitative study relying on satellite data on arctic sea ice from 1981 to 2010 and has
verified the fact that there has been drastic decline in arctic perennial ice about 38% in 2007
and in the following three years though there has been an improvement, but still the trend
shows negative relation. Derocher and Stirling in another paper named “Polar Bears in a
Warming Climate”[14] has given special emphasis on pollution impact brought about in arctic
environment claiming that there will be an alteration in concentration and pathway of
pollutants allowing them to enter artic basin through air of ocean current transport. They
have also done a health assessment on polar bears showing their short (<10), medium(10-20)
and long(>20) period health conditions, induced by climate change and the prediction of their
future health behavior that shows decline and reduced variability in their trend that is
suspected to lead this species to extinction. All this paper reviews have validated the claims to
vulnerability of polar bears to climate change and habitat loss inspite of current data showing
a stable population of the species.
Research Objective: In this study, my objective is to find out the vitality of Global Warming, as
a reason of Polar Bears’ habitat loss, over the other influencing factors. For this, it is
important to explore what are the other factors that cause habitat loss of polar bears and
how warming effect overrides them in terms of significance. This study is specific to the polar
bear bearing regions of Canada where habitat loss of this species has created several
problems.
The causal factors of polar bears’ habitat loss:
a) Toxic Pollution – Being the top predators of the arctic food chain, they are exposed to
several toxic pollutants released in Oceans and taken up through successive consumer
levels.
b) Oil Exploration – There has been a recent focus of economic importance on oil drilling in
arctic region which will make polar bears even more vulnerable to oil spills or leaks.
c) Overhunting – The Inuit communities have permission to hunt polar bears following
Government regulated quotas. But sometimes illegal hunting occurs that result to
overhunting affecting the particular species population.
d) Commercial & Industrial Activities – Human intrusion into wildlife space is always
hazardous.
e) Tourism & Recreation Activities – Overcrowding of tourists in their living space, in other
words, environmentally, exploits them making their wild space polluted.
f) Residential Extension – The exposure of water and land from beneath thick ice coverage
due to melting is attracting human habitation and its extension to the remote areas once
safe from human intervenes. Also construction of transport and communication lines are
hazardous to wild life.
g) Climate Change – The BIG problem.
Sea ice loss pertaining to polar bear habitat loss is a cumulative product of all these above
factors. But all of them other than Climate Change are local factors and hence can be
mitigated by local mitigation plans or utmost by national policies. But Climate Change being a
global phenomenon, it is not that easy to bring up mitigation plans and execute them
efficiently. Also Climate change is opening up frozen areas for human habitation, as a result,
human intrusion in wildlife space is also producing negative results. There are several global
mitigation plans to resist climate change like Kyoto Protocol, Emission Tax, Afforestation, etc.
but the success rate of their proper implementation is very low. Specially, in developing
countries, where to support huge population pressure rapid industrialization is taking place,
huge quantity of carbon elements and other greenhouse gases are added up to the
atmosphere which reaches the higher atmosphere and spread and affect the entire global
sphere. And its impacts are most prominent in Arctic areas. A study in Melbourne University
under Dr. James Screen[8] reveals that over the last two decades, warming effect in Arctic has
intensified also producing a positive albedo feedback system. Shiny sea ice platforms reflect
back insolation, providing a shield to the sea water from rising its temperature. Intense
heating when make the bounded arctic sea water ice free, immediately it starts a feedback
mechanism where the ice free water traps even more heat, making the system more efficient
in entrapping heat. This decline in arctic sea ice has directly impacted the polar bear
population.
Research Question: Since Arctic habitat loss is not just a simple outcome of climate change,
rather a complex product of simultaneous influence of all the causal factors of which other
than the last one all are global, there can be a scope to at least slow down the melting
process by local mitigation plan against these local factors and also provide advantageous
environmental conditions to the polar bears so that they don’t starve to death because of
melting sea ice as reviews suggest. Reviews show that locally it has been possible to find an
increase in polar bear subpopulations, hence a local or regional than a global conservation
procedure can be effective to maintain the global population of the polar bears. Also
educating and acknowledging people at a regional level is much easier than doing the same
globally. Also people are expected to cooperate since saving polar bears can save the local
tourism industries, its associated people from getting unemployed, the dependent Inuit
communities and also the Canadian citizens who often face attacks from the intruded
homeless hungry polar bears. Also being the top predator of the arctic food cycle, polar bears’
extinction can lead to a complete collapse to the entire arctic Marine-Terrestrial ecosystem.
Data & Methodology: In this study secondary data on Ice Extent change over the last few
decades, country and region-wise polar bear subpopulation abundance their current trend
has been collected from official sites of WWF, PBSG, IUCN, etc. Also primary data is collected
from the field on the perception of the people on habitat loss and intrusion of polar bears
into human living spaces because of this loss. Also reports are being collected on how this
Climate change impacted the polar bear population and what the future predictions show. On
and National
SOURCE:
the basis of both the analytical Snowperception
descriptive and Ice Data data
Center.
are used to comprehend the
full scenario of how the factors influencing polar bear habitat operate and also the relation
between them. From this understanding through a mixed methodology the research question
has been addressed.
 REFERENCES
1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/polar-bears-and-climate-change-what-does-the-science-say
2. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/polar-bear
3. https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/threats/
4. https://arcticwwf.org/work/climate/
5. http://www.wwf.ca/conservation/arctic/wildlife/polar_bear/
6. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22823/14871490
7. https://polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/habitat/
8. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100428142324.htm
9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/26/why-the-polar-bear-is-
still-a-pretty-good-icon-for-global-warming/?utm_term=.d3aeb8d29513
10. https://polarbearscience.com/2014/02/18/graphing-polar-bear-population-estimates-
over-time/
11. Stirling, Ian, and Andrew E. Derocher. "Possible impacts of climatic warming on
polar bears." Arctic (1993): 240-245.
12. Hamilton, Stephen G., et al. "Projected polar bear sea ice habitat in the Canadian
Arctic Archipelago." PLoS One 9.11 (2014): e113746.
13. Comiso, Josefino C. "Large decadal decline of the Arctic multiyear ice
cover." Journal of Climate 25.4 (2012): 1176-1193.
14. Derocher, Andrew E., Nicholas J. Lunn, and Ian Stirling. "Polar bears in a warming
climate." Integrative and comparative biology 44.2 (2004): 163-176.
15. https://robertscribbler.com/2015/09/03/arctic-sea-ice-prepping-for-new-record-lows-in-
2016-2017-jaxa-at-second-lowest-extent-on-record/